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Diagnosing Problems With Custom Domains - Case Study #1

Google Custom Domains, that give us the possibility of having a blog with a non-Blog*Spot address, are a major improvement over plain old Blog*Spot to many bloggers. Occasionally though, problems arise, and diagnosing the symptoms, to allow us to focus on the problems, will require some technical ability, and the right tools. And, note the possible effects of cache and DNS latency, any time that you diagnose or examine a custom domain problem.

Here's a baseline study, which will show what you should see as the best possible case. My first custom domain, "martinezumc.org", I was able to setup with 2 "CNAME" referrals. I call this "symmetrically configured".

If you can setup a pair of "CNAME" referrals, you can make either the primary domain ("domain.com") or the "www" alias ("www.domain.com") as the primary URL ("make the blog to live") - your choice. If not, you use Google Apps for the primary domain.

Popular posts from this blog

One popular Stats related accessory, which displays pageview information to the public, is the "Popular Posts" gadget.

Popular Posts identifies from 1 to 10 of the most popular posts in the blog, by comparing Stats pageview counts. Optional parts of the display of each post are a snippet of text, and an ever popular thumbnail photo.

Like many Stats features, blog owners have found imaginative uses for "Popular Posts" - and overlook the limitations of the gadget. Both the dynamic nature of Stats, and the timing of the various pageview count recalculations, create confusion, when Popular Posts is examined.

Anything that affects the traffic to your blog, such as any change in the URL, affects the success of your blog. Publishing the blog to a custom domain, like renaming the blog, will affect traffic to your blog. The effects of the change will vary from blog to blog, because of the different traffic to every different blog.Followers. People who find your blog because of recommendations by other people.Search engines. Robotic processes which methodically surf your blog, and provide dynamic indexing to people who search for information.Subscribers. People who read your content from their newsfeed reader, such as the dashboard Reading List.Viewers. People who read your content from their browser.No two blogs are the same - and no two blogs will have the same combinations of traffic sources.

We see the plea for help, periodicallyI need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help!Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all?No Chuck, be polite.OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".